Tribute to Tolkien: Postulating a Proto-Semitic Language

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, popularly known simply as J.R.R. Tolkien, created the languages of Quenya and Sindarin for his mythical realm of Middle-earth. Quenya was largely based on Finnish, Latin and Greek while Sindarin was based on Brythonic and Welsh linguistics and phonology. Aside from these, there were also other languages which were created for the Lord of the Rings epic.

I have been writing a work of fiction which draws greatly from my interest in the language, religion and history of the Semitic tradition. Thus, in what could be considered my encomium to Tolkien, I have engaged in somewhat of an experiment in Semitic philology and attempted to create a primordial Proto-Semitic language based upon carefully assumed etymon’s of early Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac and Nabataean. In my book I attribute this language to an extinct Pre-Hominid civilization referred to in Islamic cosmology as Jinn. It is commonly held belief in demonology and spiritism that the language of the ethereal world is an arcane inhuman form of Aramaic.

I based the script upon the earliest known epigraphy of Hebrew and Aramaic found in various rock inscriptions in the Near East. Below is a sample wherein I have scripted a portion of the Syriac Gospel of Mark.